I’ll be working on checking and updating my mods over the next week or so. Thank you all for your patience. I know it’s frustrating waiting for your favourite mods to be updated, I miss my mods folder too! When I have updated my mods and custom content, I will list it below. If the mod or cc is not listed it has not been checked/updated for Seasons and you should remove it from your game until it is listed.

Cinderelli_Sim needed a bit of help to investigate this pack, so she recruited The Beast, The Girl, The Boy and Luna the Cat to help her out. She earned quite a bit of money from her jungle adventures so when they got back they moved into this sweet little cottage, the perfect place for Cinderelli to practice her gardening skills!

When I first loaded the world after installing Seasons, the game asked me which Season I wanted to start in and I chose Spring. Now, I expected it to be the first day of Spring, however, it actually started me on the 6th day out of 7 (huh???). I think it did this because I’d already played in the world and must have last saved on the Friday, the calendar had to match and so the game put me on the Friday of Spring. Sadly, this didn’t give me much time to grow my Spring flowers!

Mildly perturbed, I went ahead and updated the lot with some of the new build/buy goodies! Like THE GLASS ROOFS!!! I plonked one on my greenhouse and I’m so excited to play around with these some more. I remember being really disappointed that TS3 Seasons didn’t come with a greenhouse, so I’m so pleased to get these in Seasons this time!

The first thing I did was jump into Options. I like that you can set the length of the season but I wish we could enable/disable specific seasons like we could in previous games. For review purposes I stuck to the standard 7 days, but when I’m playing normally I think I’ll use the full 28 days.

You also get some weather options where you can disable specific weathers. I guess this is because thunderstorms and blizzards might be particularly dangerous or destructive, so it’s good you can turn those off if you want to. You can also turn off rain and snow which is great because sometimes that can slow performance or just generally bother players, so I’m happy to have all these options.

Lastly, there is a toggle to ‘allow temperature effects on Sims’ and I’m so happy about this! Because, while I love that temperature effects are a thing, I don’t want to always be worrying about them if I’m focused on a different aspect of the game. Plus, some players may find this too hard to manage and prefer to only play the more fun and casual side of the game. Options are good. Yay options!

At the bottom of the screen there’s a little tab that lets you easily check the weather forecast for the day, which is handy at a quick glance. There’s a more detailed 7 day forecast on the calendar. Luckily, the weather was warm and only partly cloudy. Which was good because the Beast is one of those people who insists on wearing shorts in all weathers! Not that Cinderelli_Sim seemed to mind.

I’ll admit… the first few minutes of the game were spent by me giggling at the sunlight that was following The Beast around (which he previously picked up while exploring the jungle) and watching Luna the kitten bounding around and falling on her face.

When I finally got my seasonal act together, I had Cinderelli join the new Gardening career.

THE GARDENING CAREER SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Yeah, I’m excited about that! Gardening is always one of my favourite activities in the game and I’m so happy to have it as an actual career option now. Especially since we have the new flower arranging skill!

I love the name of the workplace ‘Peter’s Petals and Pods Landscaping’ and I was so pleased to see this is a Work from Home career with active options! Straight away Cinderelli had the task of purchasing some seeds which, naturally, she did.

Seasons will now affect when plants will grow. I’m very excited about this as it’s something I loved about Stardew Valley, planning ahead and thinking carefully about which plants I wanted to grow each Season. It also adds a bit of extra challenge and difficulty if you are planning on making a living from your plants. But don’t worry, you can still put your plants indoors if you want them to grow all year round!

When you hover over a harvested item or seed in your inventory, you will be able to see which Season the plant will grow in.

Cinderelli planted some seeds and watered them using the new feature that allows you to water a number of plants at once. Instead of watering them one by one, you now water all the plants in the nearby area. This is helpful if you want to speed up the gardening process. It’s less helpful if you quite like your game to be a bit challenging. Cinderelli seemed pretty pleased with herself anyway.

When Cinderelli looked up, she noticed the rest of the family were being a bit chaotic! the Boy had thrown paint all over the ground, so she asked him to clean that up. Luna was being adorably distracting and playing with her ball. But where was The Beast?

Oh… Oh? What’s he doing in there?

I like that The Boy was just stood there watching him like, ‘Dad… why?’

Then… the most adorable feature happened! The Boy autonomously started drawing at the activity table. Only, this wasn’t an ordinary drawing, it was a spring decoration! It was so adorable! Obviously, he must have made this to give to his smother, so I had him pick it up and give it as a gift to Cinderelli! For an awful moment I thought she was going to reject it! It would have broken my heart! Luckily, it was just Cinderelli’s resting b**** face and she did seem happy in the end.

These two features are great! You can click on a Sim and choose to gift money or an item from your inventory. It’s so sweet! I had The Beast start to do woodwork so he can give the sculptures as gifts to the kids as well.

The new seasonal craft activities on the craft table and brilliant as well! There are so many! And the items are very sweet and it’s nice to gradually decorate your home with them throughout the season.

Time to check out some of the other new objects! Cinderelli tried to chat with the Scarecrow a few times, he seems like a pretty chill guy, but I didn’t manage to unlock any new features with him yet. The Beast seemed to have a thing for the bees, he had a want to gather honey. He did ‘disturb’ the bees once without getting stung but I think he annoyed them because Cinderelli later had an uncomfortable ‘stung’ buff. Generally though, The Beast and the bees got along pretty well and soon he had some yummy honey to eat! the honey looks lovely on shelves and I hope I can sell it in my grocery stores!

Hipster Beast: the bee whisperer!

Another great feature is the swing set. The animations are nice and it’s adorable that kids can push one another. The Girl pushes The Boy on the swing in real life, so this was extra sweet to watch! Only… in real life my daughter is usually dangerously close to getting smacked in the face, whereas The Girl had enough common sense to stand to the side.

After the kids had gone to bed, it was time for the grown ups to have some fun! *wriggles eyebrows* Nah, they just played on the swings too! What did you think I meant?

Time for Cinderelli to get back to work! Of course I chose to work from home so I could play with the gardening features more! She was promoted too, which was surprisingly fast! This meant she was given a packet of fruit seeds, which a nice way of getting more seeds without having to actually buy them.

Her assignment was to ‘research a plant’. This is a new interaction where you click on the plant to learn things about it. In this case it meant Cinderelli took photos, made notes and checked the angle of her chin. Once she finished doing all this she unlocked a new entry in her notebook which told her some facts about daisies, like what you can splice them with. Handy!

Luckily, the daisies she’d planted bloomed within the day (I guess springtime is magic time for daises!) and Cinderelli got to try out flower arranging! When you click on the bench you choose the main flower you want to use or you can select ‘all’. I chose ‘daisies’ and it gave me two options to make: just daisies or daisies and bluebells. Now, this is a bit like cooking, you can make the arrangement more cheaply if you have the correct items in your inventory. Or you can make it anyway but it’ll cost you more. The nice thing about this is that it tells you how much it would cost to buy all the ingredients, and how much of a reduction you’ll get if you have some of the ingredients.

I’m the sort of player who likes to have all the ingredients before I can make something, and you can see in the UI that I only had 2 out of the 3 daisies I needed for the first option. The second option, Daisies and Bluebells, only required 2 daisies as well as 2 bluebells. Since I had half the ingredients, it would only cost me half the price to make this bouquet. But I wanted to find the bluebells!

Luckily, The Beast had spotted some wild bluebells while out jogging around the countryside, so Cinderelli set out to find them! I noticed here that the grass was painted with lots of bright yellow flowers, I think this is new to Windenburg because it is springtime.

Once Cinderelli collected the bluebells she had all the required ingredients and the bouquet was free to make! This is great if you want to run a florist business and make bigger profits, because you can keep costs down by growing your own ingredients! I wish that they’d add more ingredients to the cooking system too, like flour and eggs, so we can make all meals for free as well. They have changed the cooking UI though, to show the discounts.

A little detail I really like about flower arranging is that Cinderelli actually used bluebells and daisies in the animation! They could have used a generic animation for all bouquets like in TS2, but it’s a nice touch to see that she used the right flowers. There’s also a Salt Bae animation which tickles me!

When Cinderelli was done with the arrangement she had the option to pick from a selection of vases (which you can change at any time) and you can take a photo of your bouquet! Which is great if you want to run a florist and have pictures of your stock on the walls! I guess this might be useful later on too as you advance through the career.

I’m so pleased to have flower arranging! I like skills that let you craft something useful, like how the painting skill gives you something to decorate your house with. And I’m also happy we finally have something practical to do with the flowers! So yeah… I’ll probably be overusing this one. My only concern is that the arrangements I’ve seen so far have all looked very similar, just with different flowers, and I’d have liked some variety of shapes. But I’ve only just started playing and I hope I can unlock more styles as I progress.

Cinderelli planted the extra bluebells on her patio. The bluebells are a summer plant so she should have plenty of time to grow them next season! Sadly, her only daisy plant went into hibernation in summer (it seemed to die back and look like it had just been planted). It didn’t actually die though, which I was pleased about. I was going to move the daisy into the greenhouse, which I think would have protected it, but I wanted to see what happened if I left it outside.

As Spring drew to a close, The Boy got an invite from Grandma Mouse to go to the coffee shop in Windenburg. I took the opportunity to go and see what changes there were to the town. Not much had changed, but I do wonder if there are more flowers than usual. I’ll have to keep checking back to see what changes.

That’s it for the Springtime! It was very short because it started on day 6/7 and I’d have liked more time to explore. But it’s off to Summer next and I’m sure there be lots to discover there! I’ll leave you with some screenshots of the interior of the house. I prepared the house using pre-Seasons content and added in a few new items when I got the pack, so not everything you see will be from Seasons. But the pre-Seasons version of the lot is on the gallery already if you want to check it out! And I’ll post an updated version to the gallery when I’ve played through all 4 seasons.

Update! A few people are asking where I got the chicken and cheese ingredients. This was just something I was messing around with in my own game. I think the model for the cheese came from Sims Medieval and the meat models came from Budgie 2 Budgie’s site.

This is just a little mod I needed for my own game. I cloned the GTW retail registers and added ‘Buy Supplies’ interactions based on the catch of the day fish stall from Cats & Dogs and the groceries you can buy from the Ranger Station from Outdoor Retreat. There are two separate registers, one for fish and one for groceries, so you could use them for two separate shops or have both registers in one store.

You will not see ALL the fish and groceries in the lists. Special items such as the cow plant seed or dragon fruit will not be available and you’ll still need to get these through your gameplay. However, most custom ingredients will show on the list depending on how the creator has tagged them.

!!!Requirements!!! Get to Work is required as the register is cloned from the GTW retail register and still needs files from that expansion to run all the other interactions. The mod may also require Outdoor Retreat and Cats & Dogs because I used their code as a base, however I did create custom tuning files so it might still work without them. Ideally you’d have all three packs.

Thank you to EA for providing me with an early access code for this pack through the Gamechanger program so that I can investigate it for your beautiful faces.

Who thought one little rodent could cause so much trouble!? This pack has definitely been controversial. Personally, I don’t like how this has been packaged. I thought that small pets should have been included in Cats & Dogs and I think bringing us rodents in a stuff pack so soon after the expansion feels insensitive. I also think I’d have preferred them to have had the rodents as a standalone pack. I can see that some players do want more items for cats and dogs though, so I’m not adverse to having more paid content for that expansion. I just don’t like that this feels mixed, you can’t have one without the other.

I’m also not usually a big pets player. Sure, I like to have them in my game and I can definitely make use out of a rodent but will I ever use more pet clothes?

Well… it turns out this is the pack I never knew I needed.

It turns out dressing you kid or your toddler like you dog IS REALLY FREAKING CUTE!!! Who knew!? But not adults… because if you’re an adult and you wear a matching outfit with your cat then… that’s a bit weird I’m not going to lie. Even Hammy judges you.

So for this review I had to use a different family because Cinderelli is still lost in the jungle of Selvadorada. I chose the Jang family from San Myshuno, basically because I noticed there was a lot of orange in this pack and they seem to like that colour. Oh, and because they also have a child and a toddler in my game, which is perfect (purrfect?) for showing off the new children’s clothing. So I then decided to give them a dalmatian called Coco, a cat called Peanut that looks like a hamster, and a small dog called Fifi which reminds me of Englishsimmer’s dog and which makes me pull this face:

There are two new adult hair meshes in this pack, the short wavy style that is enabled for both genders and a long choppy style that comes in full colour and right highlight versions. I’m not too keen on the choppy style unless I’m making a goth or vampire Sim, but I think the short hair looks great on Anaya.

There are not many clothing items for Sims in this pack since the focus seems to be more on Pets. But you do get some t-shirt recolours which are cute. I particularly like the pocket-hamster t-shirt which reminds me of a real-life cat shirt (which I NEED) but I wish it came in more colour options. There are also some very sweet onsies for kids which are just adorable.

Then there are lots of new clothes and costumes for pets. Now… I don’t think I’m ever going to need to dress a dog to look like Bob Pancakes or Mortimer Goth… but I have to admit that having the option to do so is kind of amusing. There are some items that I do think I’d use. I think Coco looks sweet in the flat cap and I gave it to her as her ‘outdoor’ outfit. And Fifi actually does look kind of cute in the little dress. But my favourite outfits are the onesies and the outfits that match child or toddler clothes.

The Jang family needed a bigger house for their expanding family so I moved them to the big house in Brindleton Bay and did a bit of redecorating! I didn’t think I needed any more pet objects but I actually do like the new items that came with this pack. I think I prefer a lot of them to the expansion stuff, especially the pet beds which look a bit comfier and interesting. Those egg and beef beds are great for kitchens! However, the colour options on the large cat jungle don’t seem to match well with the rest of the pack which is annoying.

The furniture is cute and matches well with existing content and it is particularly useful for kids’ rooms. But I wish the office chair had little faces on them like the chair of the painting table. The new blinds come in three sizes, which is great because I always struggle to find blinds that fit all properly. Oh, and you get two new pet doors too.

The gameplay components of this pack are the rodent habitats with the option of having a hedgehog, rat, hamster or bubalus (which is a voidcritter from the Kid’s Room pack). What no mice!? Rude!

I know that some players were like ‘But my first pet was an African elephant!’ and I understand where they’re coming from. However, I do like the idea of hamsters being my Sim child’s first pet, and having them learn to love and look after their new little friend before moving on to bigger and scarier animals like vampire cats or dogs that think they are a banana.

I can also think of lots of ways I’ll use rodents. I’d love to have them in a school or nursery setting as a class pet. I could set up a petting zoo or have them in my pet themed retail store. And my natural scientist definitely needs a bubalus friend in her lab! In fact, any child with an interest in nature or science will be getting a new rodent buddy.

When I added a pet hamster to the house, the whole Jang family were instantly obsessed! Especially the pets who were constantly grouped around the poor mini-peanut. At first I thought this was really sweet but I think they need to tone that down just a notch. I did like seeing Coco the dalmatian watching Hammy intently in a very realistic dog-like way. And I like that cats can jump up onto the lid of the habitat, even though it is a little unnerving.

Billie claimed the hamster as her own and took the responsibility of feeding, entertaining and generally caring for Hammy. I like that the rodents have a happiness pop-up that appears if you hover the cursor over the habitat, it tells you if their needs are met so you don’t have to guess. I’m a bit paranoid about keeping animals happy and healthy in the game (which I think is why I often find them too much work to have them in every household) so anything that makes it easier to care for them is good for me. Hammy seemed to be quite content while I was playing with this family: running around his enclosure; exercising on his wheel; and rolling in his food. I didn’t see him doing anything weird though, like building a rocket ship, but I did keep excitedly checking on his habitat like ‘Let’s see what Hammy is doing now!?’.

Although I disagree with the way this content was packaged, the actual items are really nice and I’m glad I have them in my game. I honestly didn’t think I’d like this pack that much but as soon as I saw how pure the relationship was between toddler Sam and the dalmatian Coco was I was broken. Seeing them running around and playing dressed as superheros was just too much! They were naturally interacting with each other and Coco was always by Sam’s side and it was the sweetest thing.

So I think my favourite part about the pack is actually the matching child, toddler and pet outfits. There’s just something magical about seeing your toddlers and their favourite companion doing everything together while dressed in identical clothes. Having your Sim-child have that kind of relationship with their best friend is adorable to watch.

Should you buy this pack? I guess you have to weigh up how much you would use this content in your game. If you are the kind of simmer who usually plays with pets and families then you’ll probably get the most out of this pack. I think it really is aimed at quite a specific type of homely gameplay style. I don’t always play that way but I think I’ll be able to use the rodents in other scenarios, like in the natural science area of my museum as a hands-on educational exhibit.

While some of the items in this pack can be used without owning Cats & Dogs, I’m not sure it’s fair to buy a stuff pack if you can only use half the content. So unless you desperately want the rodents I’d probably wait for a sale. But if you do already own C&D and you’d like more content for your pets then this pack adds a lot of matching items which I personally think compliment the existing items really well.

I’m not adverse to getting more paid content for pets in the future, but I’d prefer to have a specific C&D add on with more gameplay, maybe with something like an interactive pet grooming or stylist career. And if they were to add more small pets or a pet store, I think that needs to be fully standalone content. But for now I’d like the gurus to move on to a different theme and… let sleeping dogs lie.

My grumpy-to-interested reaction to this stuff pack as acted out by an adorable hedgehog:

Thank you once again to EA Gamechangers for providing me with the code.

I was HYPED to receive an early access code for The Sims 4 Jungle Adventure Game Pack through the EA Game Changer program because I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS PACK and the wait has been killing me slowly like evil jungle spider poison!

WHY am I so hyped for this pack? Firstly, because I loved TS3 World Adventures and TS2 Bon Voyage! I really love getting new interesting places to explore in The Sims, it’s not just the vacation or adventure aspect (although those are great too!) but also being able to experience different cultures that I don’t normally get to experience in my day to day life. In Bon Voyage I particularly liked speaking to the local people to learn their traditional dances and songs, and I loved exploring The Majestic Ruins of Jumbok IV!

And World Adventures was a favourite pack for TS3 because I loved having those different worlds to explore and I particularly loved collecting all the exclusive items that were specific to those worlds, not just the relics, but also turquoise gems in Al Simhara and all the different grape varieties in Champs Les Sims. Of course, exploring the tombs was really fun too! And I loved bringing home all the goodies and decorating my house with them.

Another reason why I’m so happy about Jungle Adventures is that I recreated all my characters from TS3 in TS4 but I’ve been missing some of the features. So, for example, one of my Sims is an Indiana Jones style archaeology professor but having neither the education career nor much archaeology beyond digging up the small number of fossils I was at a bit of a loss with him. So I made my Archaeology Mod. But I wasn’t 100% satisfied with it and have been working out what do do to improve it. So when I found out about all the awesome features in Jungle Adventures I was SO FREAKING EXCITED!!! The archaeology aspect looks amazing and it even has it’s own aspiration! YAY!

So, before we sacrifice Cinderelli-Sim to the fate of Salvadorada, let’s watch the gameplay trailer so we know what’s in store for her!

Create A Sim

First stop, Create-a-Sim for some adventure clothes! I also wanted to make The Beast to accompany Cinderelli-sim into the jungle and generally do all the hard work. Since Cinderelli is a clumsy old bean I gave her the Archaeology Scholar aspiration and it’s close to my interests in real-life (I studied Classics at Uni and want to be Mary Beard when I grow up). And since The Beast is a lot more explorer-y and into, you know, actual physical movement I gave him the Jungle Explorer aspiration.

The new clothing is half traditional Spanish-ish style, or Spanish-ish inspired modern clothing. These have lovely bright Peruvian style patterns, cosy knits and LLAMAS!!! And then there are also new adventure-appropriate clothes like cargo pants and denim shirts which scream Indiana Jones and Lara Croft!

Cinderelli got some practical outfits so she can dress up as a renowned archeaologist, but also a couple of bright clothes for attempting to Salsa dance at the local cantina. The new clothing actually reflects what the Beast would wear in real life, it’s very much his style! Sort of an ex-SAS hanging out at the cantina look I guess? Only in rl he has a shaved head and I wanted him to model the new long-haired bandana style, so his simself grew a head of luscious locks just for this adventure!

I really like the CAS assets in this pack, they’re really wearable and adaptable, with plenty of plain versions of the more patterned items. 10/10 gurus, well done!

I’m not going to list every item here, but I’ll be spamming Twitter with plenty of screenshots of different items and how I combined them with other items in the game once the embago lifts. I’ll also try to link to some Youtube CAS videos below.

Adventure Time!

New world icon hyyyype!

The Beast and Cinderelli touched down in Selvadorada and rented a nice little house near the market. They were hungry so I sent them to the food stand to order meals that I did not recognise with my low Selvadorian Culture skill. So I grabbed them something that looked vaguely taco-like and they seemed to enjoy it, even if it did overwhelm their senses a bit, giving them a bad buff. This is a bit like when you send Sims to the Spice District and they have to build up a tolerance to the hot food.

Then I ordered them to grab all the supplies that were available (thank you Motherlode) and shared them out evenly between them. Only, the supplies change and not everything is available all the time. So you have to keep checking back to get all the supplies you need. Luckily (or worryingly) the game randomly gave the Beast a machete, so at least we didn’t have to pull down vines with our bare hands! Yeah… more on that later…

The marketplace area is really pretty! And the paths are kind of winding and it’s fun to try and find your way about at ground level. There’s a lovely little dock area too which is a great fishing spot.

Once they had full tummies and a backpack full of supplies I sent them off to the base camp to explore the jungle area! Once they got there, Cinderelli realised The Beast had forgotten to buy any camping supplies (I didn’t realise until later that you are supposed to buy them from the merchants by clicking directly on them). Luckily the magical jungle supplied a Granite Falls ranger station with the mighty ‘bb.showhiddenobjects true’ spell! And it worked surprisingly well there, I could buy all my camping gear, including the new toddler bed if needed and pet items. And it even correctly directed Cinderelli-sim to the cool looking canvas bathroom!

‘What do you mean you forgot the tent?’

‘Hey, at least we have barrel meat!’

*unamused face*

Next, Cinderelli pretended to be a real archaeologist and started hitting a dig site with a hammer. It made me laugh that her thought bubbles reflected what my childish brain would be thinking, doing Hamlet impressions (‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio!’) and thinking I was Indiana Jones.

‘Artefact shaped dirt clump.‘

But The Beast was ready to explore!

‘Let’s climb to the top of the mountain!’ he cried, trampling all over the dig site. Without waiting for an answer he jogged off along the path.

‘Uh… sure,’ was Cinderelli’s unenthusiastic response. She was already getting attacked by all kinds of pesky insects including…

Well, the bee stings hurt and put Cinderelli off from following The Beast deeper into the bug infested jungle. So while he attacked some vines with his machete like Rambo doing his gardening, Cinderelli contented herself with cooking some nice, safe, non #BarrelMeat veggie burgers, enjoying the beautiful sunset, and carefully reading the information sign for more tips.

Also… THERE’S A MOUSE ON THAT SIGN!!! <3__<3

The Beast meanwhile, was a little too enthusiastic with the machete and umm… managed to lose it. Ooooooh no. Then he stumbled on some wild Capybaras and managed to anger a swarm of bees.

BEES!!!

So… they called it a night and went home.

While The Beast recovered from his ordeal, Cinderelli went back to the market in search of a new machete. She couldn’t find one, but she did buy some cute wicker baskets and wooden dolls! They’ll be helpful, right? She also found a handy archaeology table and worked on that ‘artefact shaped dirt clump’ and discovered that it really was Yorick all along! Where be your jibes now huh Yorick?

The next day of adventuring started off really well! Cinderelli and The Beast explored the new area they had uncovered which was a beeeautiful waterfall! Cinderelli found a new dig site while the poor Beast had to tackle the vines with only his machete-less bare hands and The Force. (His hands were more effective.)

‘Why isn’t this working?‘

But then… the jungle attacked!

First a friendly spider said hello to Cinderelli. Then they stumbled across a weird egg and were attacked by the creature’s fire-breathing mother!

But they managed to stumble into the next area where Cinderelli enjoyed the view, ate some granola from the cooler, ‘fertilised’ a bush and spent her time feeling generally paranoid about bugs. The Beast was attacked by bats while clearing the next gate, but luckily he had some Bat Bait which managed to distract them.

(They also forgot the cooler and had to go back for it later!)

At last they stumbled into a magical swamp area with sunken ruins. Amazingly the bugs there were kind of glowy and pretty and didn’t want to kill Cinderelli! Some spiders did try to jump The Beast but he had some handy Dr Parker’s Spider Deterrent from that original survival package the game gave him. I noticed too that Cinderelli seemed to have improved her excavating technique, instead of simply hitting the dig site with a hammer, she was now using the hammer to gently chisel the rock away.

The best part was that they found a treasure chest! Cinderelli was so excited she managed to heave the heavy lid off herself! But her moment of pride was immediately dampened by a notification telling her she had angered the gods and was now cursed! Not to worry, I thought, I’ll just have her avoid anything electrical. But no, the gods affirmed she would definitely die of electrocution in three days!

Now… I’m not a fan of random death in the game so this didn’t exactly please me. But during the live stream, the gurus assured us that there were cures for all the poisons and curses, or at least ways to avoid them.

Cinderelli will be fine… right?

*sigh*

Well, Cinderelli if you insist on pillaging ancient cultures for their artefacts, what do you expect!? (Topical comment.)

It was late so Cinderelli and The Beast decided to make camp for the night then set back to the village in the morning to seek advice. But Cinderelli was not to have a good nights sleep! First she got attacked by spiders while inside her tent (too close to a real life camping experience for me!). Then she was rudely awoken from her sleep to be zapped by a peevish god! RUDE! At this point she gave up on sleep and since she was starting to smell worse than a festering sloth she made her way back to base camp. Unfortunately the stink was too much to bear and she stopped halfway down the trail to have an uncomfortably sexy bottle wash. By the time The Beast followed her back to camp, she was stomping around and ready to go home.

While Cinderelli recovered in a comfy bug free bed, The Beast went in search for some way to break the curse. He was supposed to be asking the locals at the cantina but had a few too many drinks and got distracted.

That is NOT how you Salsa, Beast.

Then he spotted the cute stray pupper and tried to befriend it. He even bought little Yogi a new food bowl from the vendor. But sadly, the doggo didn’t want to be adopted and bounded away into the Selvadorian sunset.

Maybe Cinderelli would have better luck? She spoke to a few locals until she found one who had information about an antidote! But she didn’t have any bone dust! Oh well, she’d have to visit the museum and order the 1000 simolean antidote online!

Success! The curse was broken! But the gods had ‘blessed’ her with a new problem…

‘I belong in a museum!’ Cinderelli-skelly giggled.

Well, at least this curse wasn’t as permanent as the last one and would wear off naturally in a few days. Perhaps she could have fun trolling The Beast!

‘What do you think of my new look?’

‘Uh…’ The Beast was lost for words. But he was glad he hadn’t brought home the dog.

That was the end of Cinderelli and The Beast’s first adventure in Selvadorada! If you’d like me to explore with them more please let me know. And look out for more of my random screenshots of The Sims 4 Jungle Adventure on Twitter.

Thank you once again to EA for providing me with the code. Happy Simming!

I got tired of using the same 3 lipsticks and frustrated with the lack of natural matte shades to suit all skintones. So I decided to make my own and got carried away as usual! In total I made five lipstick packages.

* Matte Recolours – Natural: I used the matte lipstick from Get Together as a base and reduced the lipliner, especially around the corners of the mouth where the lipstick bleeds off the edges of the lip. I’d call these the ‘everyday shades’ in 30 summery colours. They particularly suit mid-tone skin colours.

* Matte Recolours – Natural Light: These are the lightest shades of lipstick, designed to look like nude lips with no makeup. However, they come in 30 shades of subtle peach, red and pink tones so they give just a hint of colour and are pretty easy to match with lighter skintones.

* Matte Recolours – Natural Dark: I’m in love with grungy late 90’s make up at the moment and these shades are my current favourites (can I haz irl plz?)! They come in 30 brown, red and plum shades. They look best on light to mid skintones, but a couple of colours look pretty glam on darker skintones too.

* Matte Recolours – For Dark Skintones: These lipsticks took the most amount of time as I graduated the colours across the lips to make them blend better and look less blocky on the edges. In the end I’m really pleased with how they turned out and I hope you like them too. There are 40 shades in a range of plummy or soft nude colours and they were made specifically for darker skintones.

01/06/2018 – Thank you to everyone who have reported that the mod has broken after a patch. I do plan on updating once Seasons is installed.

I've completely re-made this mod from scratch and there are a few changes. Firstly I've taken away the actual junk pile as I didn't feel like it fit the art style of TS4 properly. Instead the interactions have been added to most of the outdoor bins you find all around the existing open worlds and on community lots. So you will be able to search for junk as soon as you install the mod without having to set anything up (assuming there is trash in the bin, if the bin is empty you obviously won’t find anything in there because… logic).

You can now specify what kind of trash you are searching for: furniture, electronics, or random junk. This is useful in different scenarios, for example a runaway teen might be looking for a tent and a shower (junk), a handy sim might be looking to repair some electronics to sell in their store (electronics), or a student might just need some cheap and cheerful furniture for their dorm room.

Of course, it would be too easy if you could simply find a load of awesome stuff in the trash! So to balance this out a little, I reduced the value of all the items to around 10% of the normal price. So you can’t earn a huge profit from simply selling the items as-is. To make it a bit more realistic I tried to also make the objects dirty or broken where possible, so they will need fixing and cleaning when you pull them out of the trash. Other objects are given descriptive text like ‘wobbly table’ and I created dirty looking swatches for most objects.

However (I’m really excited about this part!!!) I really love the idea of up-cycling salvaged objects. So I spent a lot of time adding custom swatches for many of the items! I particularly chose a festival/beachy style which I think fits the art style of the game. I also found that the beach recolours work really well in Brindleton Bay, especially on the Outdoor Retreat items which have a new lease of life! So once you’ve pulled your salvaged items from the trash and cleaned/repaired them, you can drag the objects onto a lot (community lots work just fine as long as it’s not in the open world) where you can use the design tool to change the look of your items as though the Sim has given them a makeover with some new fabrics! The mod works great for festivals on a budget and I plan to have my design student up-cycle furniture and sell it in a store to pay her way through uni!

I’ve thoroughly tested the mod and everything seems to be up and running perfectly on my end, but do let me know if you find any issues. I hope to continue to update this mod by adding more items.

The items that you can find require:

* The Base Game
* Get Together
* City Living
* Outdoor Retreat

So all the above are REQUIRED for the mod to function properly. You can still try to use it if you are missing any of those packs but the missing objects will not drop and the game will throw an error at you when it tries to drop those items. Also note that I removed the yoga mat for now as I wanted to use the minimal amount of expansions for this version, but I plan to re-add it again in an alternative version.

Updated! 7th December 2017. Since the code for salvaging items was based on EA’s ‘rummage’ code, the interaction was disabled on home lots. Sadly, this also meant that Sims couldn’t rummage for trash in the open world areas around their lots (apparently Sims own the whole neighbourhood… go figure!). I changed the code to allow Sims to salvage items on their home lots and surrounding areas as I felt like this was more beneficial for players who like to avoid loading screens. This means that Sims can also salvage on their home lot, which isn’t ideal, but we can imagine some naughty Sim has dumped their trash on our lot. XD Thank you to Jymm for drawing my attention to the problem. Please redownload and replace the file.

]]>https://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/the-junk-mod-v2/feed/27cinderellimouseVote for Gameplay Features for a New Stuff Pack!https://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/2017/06/23/vote-for-gameplay-features-for-a-new-stuff-pack/
https://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/2017/06/23/vote-for-gameplay-features-for-a-new-stuff-pack/#commentsFri, 23 Jun 2017 18:45:45 +0000http://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/?p=3880Continue reading Vote for Gameplay Features for a New Stuff Pack!]]>If you haven’t already heard, Sim Guru Graham and the Stuff Pack team have opened the development of a new stuff pack to the community. Graham has been explaining the kind of decisions that have to be made and the process behind designing and making a pack. The community have been able to vote of aspects like the style of the objects and which clothing concepts are chosen for Create-A-Sim. Now it’s time to vote for the GAMEPLAY of the pack! The choice is between: 1. Carbon Conscious; Laundry; Food Preserves; and Off the Grid. And you can vote for your favourite on the official site.

Here are screenshots of each design blurb and I’ll say what I thought of each below.

1. Carbon Conscious

At first glance this seemed like something I would be very interested in! I have my Freegan household which I’ve been playing for a while.

I really like the idea of a ‘freegan’ trait and I like the idea of rummaging in trash cans because this made me think of the dumpster diving in TS3 University Life. However… only ingredients??? I get that freegan thing of not wasting edible food but Sims can already rummage in trash cans for food so that doesn’t really add anything new. And you can already get free ingredients by collecting them from plants around the open world areas. So there doesn’t seem like much point to this. I’d rather something more like the TS3 dumpster diving where you collect random junk, mixed with the TS3 junk yard. I’d love to collect old dirty furniture and broken electricals, clean and repair them, and sell them on for a profit.

I like the idea of the composter a lot, but would prefer this along with an ‘eco-friendly’ trait which I’d prefer over the ‘freegan’ trait as I think I’d use it more.

I like the idea of recycling bins but feel like it’s overkill alongside the composter. I’d be happy with a trash can mimic that looked like recycling bins in different colours.

As much as I’d love more eco-friendly features, I feel like this concept is underdeveloped and the ideas could be incorporated into a larger pack or be combined with one of the other ideas.

2: Laundry

Love it! Want it! Would definitely purchase!

I like that it specifies that it would only come into effect if you actually placed the objects on the lot, like in TS3, because I may want laundry as gameplay for some families but not others.

I like that it has machine and non-machine options. I think hand washing and line drying would suit historical games. I love the idea of a line.

My only concern is that it doesn’t specifically say that ‘eco concious’ is a trait, and I would really want it to be.

3: Food Preserves

Nooooooo! Why would you do this to me!? How can I choose between this and laundry!? Canning and nectar making are two of my all time favourite Sim things!!!

I AM IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION!!!

Wait… these features are close to my heart and I have concerns:

1. Are there different fruit flavoured jams? I want the jam to reflect the chosen ingredient, not be generic ‘jams’.
2. Do the jams, cans and nectars have a value? Because I’m going to want to sell them. A lot.
3. It says ‘a new harvestable plant’, indicating there will be one new plant in this pack. But it also says there will be new grape varieties. It’s important to me that the new grape varieties are also harvestable plants.
4. Can I can, preserve and nectarificate (nectarify? We’ll just say ‘ferment’) ANY ingredient? No matter how silly? Because if I want to make 2000 year old chicken and onion nectar and force my Sims to drink it to see how sick they get then I AM ENTIRELY WITHIN MY RIGHTS TO DO SO!!!

5. ‘electric’ canning pot? Urgh, I hope it’s not some huge mechanical monstrosity like the cupcake machine! A key thing I liked about canning in TS1 and TS3 was that it had that adorable stove and it was so old-fashioned and lovely. The word ‘electronic’ puts me right off!!!

I’m surprised that the pack suggests we will get canning, preserves AND nectar all in one pack and I am VERY concerned that this means the development will be stretched and it won’t be as in depth as previous versions and mods. If that were the case I’d rather have one or the other in this pack and have it done properly, then continue to hope for the other in another pack.

I actually did vote for this one, because I just loved nectar making so so so much and I know I’d use this so often! But it was difficult to decide between this and laundry.

4: Off the Grid

I do really like this idea! Particularly the idea of having the new lot trait which would switch off utilities. I think this would be good for history players and households like the Freegans.

Like the Carbon Conscious pack, I feel like this one is missing something. I feel like those two packs could be combined by keeping the stronger features and dropping others. Or that this could be part of a larger pack like Seasons or Farming because of the water/solar aspect and rustic theme.

I’d prefer a traditional, slightly rustic/industrial style for the objects, like a handy Sim cobbled them together in their shed. The whole ‘tree and leaves’ thing sounds weird to me.

Conclusion:

I basically like all the ideas and would like ALL THE THINGS!!! But I think Carbon Concious could offer something more interesting like dumpster diving and cleaning/upgrading/repairing broken objects like my junk mod. I think this would be more useful as rummaging in the trash for food and collecting free ingredients is something that already exists. And as much as I like the sound of Off the Grid, it sounds like it could be included in a bigger pack like Seasons or Farming. Although I’d still be happy to get it in a Stuff Pack too! I would love both Laundry and Food Preserves and I would get the most use out of those packs. I am just concerned that nectar making and jam making won’t be as flexible as I would like it to be.

I really love the country counters that came with Parenthood and thought they’d look great with the wooden texture from the hipster base game counters. So… here they are! I cloned all the original counter colours and added either a light, dark, or black wood surface depending on the original counter colour for each swatch (or variant if you are Sim Guru Daniel).

The texture works really well on the wall counters, but sadly it doesn’t quite match when you place different shaped pieces island counters side by side. I don’t think it’s too bad (see pics below).

The next time I played the Nihil’s life (and apartment) was still a mess. But Krista woke up in a better mood. She felt less ill than she had at the start of her pregnancy and I caught er autonomously dancing to the stereo while Tre was out busking.

She was eating breakfast when she started to feel like she needed a nap, unfortunately there was a lot of shouting going on in the street outside and it seemed to be some kind of protest. Krista went out to speak to them: to explain that she was pregnant and tired, and to ask how long they would be there for because she needed to get some sleep. The protesters were nice enough, they tried to explain what they were campaigning for, but Krista didn’t really understand and just wanted to finish her breakfast and have a nap.

Tre had been busking all day, people were friendly and interested in his music, but for some reason they didn’t tip much. That is until Nancy Landgraab turned up dressed as a tourist and tipped him about five times in a row! He made over $100! Thanks Nancy!

(I have a technique now to hijack the busking stations. I have Tre talk to the Sim who is using it, then click the ground a distance away from them to use the ‘chat here’ interaction. This makes the original busker leave the station and I cancel the interaction and have Tre run back and use it himself. Clara Bjergsen’s expression after Tre did it to her was amusing. Tee hee hee!)

The next day Krista woke up feeling desperate for the bathroom, apparently the baby was using her bladder as a football. They grabbed leftovers for breakfast and sat down to figure out how they’d pay their bills. No one would hire a heavily pregnant girl with no skills or experience, would they? Anyway, Krista was too tired all the time to work too hard. Tre thought his guitar skills were improving an he was even starting to sing a bit, he was sure his big break would come soon!

‘That’s great!’ Krista enthused.

…and then the lights went out.

They hadn’t been in the apartment long enough to have received any bills. So it wasn’t like they’d missed an electricity payment and had their service cut off. So… Krista rang the landlord. It turned out there was a problem with the fuse box and he sorted it out. He was friendly enough and even hung round to watch a bit of telly with Krista. Until she got sick again and he left quickly. She thought it was morning sickness at first but it turned out she had some kind of bug.

Krista and Tre really were in a sorry state! I’m genuinely worried about how they will pay their bills and if they’ll get kicked out of their apartment. They might end up living in a tent! Not good when you have a baby on the way. And I don’t think the apartment is a healthy environment with all the damp and problems. Krista seems ill all the time. I hope I can help them turn things around!